Why ATAGIO™?

People have been communicating through speech long before alphabets were invented and utilized. In the modern age, tablets, computers and smart phones have given us the ability to type legible text that can be read across multiple platforms and systems. However, in today’s fast-paced society where time is money and attention spans seem to be getting shorter by the minute, wouldn’t a simple voice tagging solution be preferable than writing and reading through pages of texts?

Born out of a need to solve a problem that Biologists were facing while doing their field work, Atagio™ was formed. Rather than having to take photos of a specific object and then attempt to write commentary while describing a specific point in the photo, we have developed an efficient solution. With a simple touch, you can now integrate your commentary into specific points of the photo or document, expunging the need to write senseless and labor-some texts. Moreover, in our 3 years of development, we have found that our solutions apply not only to scientists doing fieldwork but also to architects, lawyers, insurance companies, maintenance crew, designers and construction workers to name a few. The photographers both professional and amateur amongst us can now simply Snap, Speak and Share what they are viewing and thinking at a given moment.

Facebook

Fields of Application

Atagio™ is THE one and only voice-tagging tool that can be used across an endless amount of arenas. The examples below will help you to better understand what Atagio™ is and several fields of work that have already adapted our solutions. Moreover, Atagio™ can be utilized in almost any workflow where annotations are needed on an x,y,z level.

The examples shall help to better understand what the invention is doing. The invention is not limited to such use cases but open for new cases as well as the method can be adapted to almost any other kind of workflow where annotations are needed on an x,y,z level.

• Example scientist doing field research: Scientists during their field research need to take photos and notes, where the notes are connected to areas shown in the photo. An image of a real world scene is photographed with a mobile device. For example, a scientist takes a photo of a river the embankment of which has to be recultivated. He/she marks some spots with finger taps or draws a circle around a tree. This can be done directly after the shot or at any later time. Now voice tags can be added, either directly after the marking or at any other time. Those tags will be embedded on x,y,z level and integrated to the file. The same can be done with other files but sound, e.g. checklists. After one year the scientist wants to show the results of his work, takes the original file, adds additional photos and voice annotations and so on.

• Example group of scientists doing field research (as described also in Figure 4 and the description to Figure 4):
  

  Figure 4

  Scientist 1 is the manager of field research project. He / she explores the area, adding photos to specific points or areas of a plan. Voice tags are added to the plan as well as to some of the photos, explaining with human voice, what needs to be done. Groups or Persons can be linked to these single points. Checklists and / or documents can be linked to these points or areas.
  Scientists 2-n are doing their work now, adding again photos, documents and voice tags.
  This can be done in several iterations or loops. In the end a file with all the results and the discussion to come to this point is existing, with a maximum in traceability and transparency (who decided when what, who did when what, what has when been done with photo and explanation…).

• Example engineers collaborate on an architect’s plan (as described also in Figures 2 and 5 and the description to Figure 2 and Figure 5):

Figure 2

professionals need to comment parts of plansand other documents. The architect uploads the 3D plan to a server where it can be accessed by the engineers at construction side. The executing engineers on the construction side discuss over the plan, adding voice annotations to areas or spots on x,y,z level, adding additional files (e.g. sketches or drawings on how to fulfill certain tasks) and add people or groups to areas in the plan, thus creating a workflow.

Figure 5

During the construction photos are taken for documentation reasons, linked to areas or points in the plan an again tagged by voice or other documents. This can be done in several iterations or loops. In the end a file with all the results and the discussion to come to this point is existing, with a maximum in traceability and transparency (who decided when what, who did when what, what has when been done with photo and explanation…).

• Example formal acceptance of the construction work: at the end of a construction there is a formal acceptance of the conducted work. Construction defects or quality defects need to be marked and documented. With our invention the formal acceptance can be done with the original part, defects can be captured by photo and linked to the respective areas in the plan; voice tags added to the photographs can contain To-Dos or decisions. Trancparency and traceability is given, after the repair of the defects new photos can be added and integrated, thus documenting that it has been repaired as decided; checklists embedded to areas in the plan can be filled by different persons enhanced with their results, thus creating a total documentation of the fulfilment of repairs e.g. in room 2 on floor 3. Photos and documents are directly linked to the plan which makes it much easier to find them again.

• Example collaboration on a scientific paper or a thesis (as described also in Figure 2 and the description to Figure 2): Professors and teachers need to make comments on parts of documents. Sometimes explaining with voice is easier to understand than typing a text, which usually does not correspond fully with spoken content. So professor marks an area in a document, adds his or her voice tag to this area and share the file again with the student, who either just work through the comments or can comment also. The same method can also be used for papers where a group of persons works on, with possibilities to add persons or subgroups to areas. Also can additional files be linked to the selected areas.

• Similar examples could be the work of an insurance
  

  Figure 6

  expert witness, gathering information about e.g. damages after a heavy rain incident, photographing those damages, adding voice tags with to does to each damage (as shown in Figure 6 and the description to figure 6), but also the communication between a fashion designer and its customer on photos of a piece of fashion.

• All the examples describe 3D and 2D non-moving pictures, but the method includes this also for moving pictures (as these are only a number of sequential single pictures).

Customer Value

Most people can speak faster than they can type, especially on tablets and/or smartphones. The Atagio™ solutions are very intuitive, making for quite adaptation, allowing for quick and easy solutions to everyday problems with a smaller degree of errors or misunderstandings. Our voices are unique to all of us, enabling the listener to quickly understand what is being said and in what context.

Gabrielle – a fashion designer

Karen – a professor

Karen has numerous theses to work on. She does this mostly at home, at the office she would be disturbed too often. In summer she likes to sit on the veranda, in winter on the couch. She takes her pad, loads an Adobe ® PDF file, marks spots and talks her remarks into the microphone. No typing necessary, so much faster and easier to use than a computer …

Then she can mail the links with her remarks, directly to her students.

Ricardo – an explorer

You can call Ricardo a speleologist, a spelunker or a caver – he explores caves. Sometimes for pleasure, sometimes as part of a study and sometimes in order to make the cave safer for other persons who come after him.
What he brings back are photos. But sometimes, a photo cannot show everything Ricardo has seen. It is hard to shoot professional photos in places like that. And in many cases the person viewing the photo does not have Ricardos experience. Therefore, the photos must be explained:
For scientific photos or slideshows, Ricardo uses a professional camera. But for the explanations he has ATAGIO™.
For most of us caves are perfectly safe, well-lit places. Not so for Ricardo, he goes where others should not. You do not like to write or use a keyboard or have more than one tool in your hands when you stand on a slippery ledge on the dark.

The Insurance Company

In the case of a damage or injury, an insurance agent will want to see the extent of the problem, and, of course, take photos. In the case of a car accident, he or she might want to draw an arrow and say “This is where the other car hit”.
Or they might draw a circle and say “this damage has existed before, it is rusty”.

Technologies

We did have some challenges to overcome, such as:

• Find a way to create, save and integrate the different annotations on the image, i.e. the coordinates of every annotation (in 3D on the basis of an area of voxels, in 2D on the basis of an area of pixels) in a file
• Find a way to create, save and integrate the different annotations on other, especially non picture oriented files (e.g. PDFs) in a file
• Find a way to synchronize databases of such files from different (mobile) devices, so that the users can see the results of the other users
• Find a way to integrate group-members, checklists or ontologies to such files
• Find a way to integrate such information in a way that allows to set up a workflow to be followed and integrate the results of such workflow to the file or a copy of the original file

We did this using the following technologies:

The mobile apps are created with Basic4Android, a tool for Rapid Application Development. Additionally, we use generic Android libraries (camera, audio, maps …) and SQLite database.

The engines on the server side are written in PHP with MySQL. The user interface is PHP with Javascript. The homepage is WordPress with Zephyr theme.

The Adobe ® PDF tagging engine produces HTML5 (audio, media capture) with the help of Gnostice PDFOne for Java, using CSS3 (Mediaqueries, Transitions and Animations) and Javascript with JQuery.
The PDF voice tagging application for Windows was created with Embarcadero RAD Studio and Gnostice PDF Toolkit VCL Pro Plus

And we have used: hektoliters of coffee, tea, water, juices, beers and white wine with sparkling water (the so-called „Spritzer“ in Austria); some food (mostly junk, but also good fresh made stuff as Peter, his wife, Michael and his wife are all excellent cooks); a few kilometers of Flipchart and paper for notes (unfortunately we did not have our solution ready for creating our solution ;-)); hours of discussions regarding functional design, GUI and look & feel, features to be offered now or later, …; a few bad words, most of them starting with sh*** and f*** during programming and testing, but also during business- and marketing plan development; a continuous lack of sleep during the development phase (also because of time differences between Vienna and New York); … but we also had a truckload of fun and satisfaction and now our baby is finally here!

Prices

ATAGIO™ is available

• as an app for smartphone and tablets: take photos directly from the app or from the gallery, mark single or multiple spots or areas in the photo and comment them with voice and share it with other users and / or upload it to social media or picture databases
• as a solution for scientific work, where you need to take Photos and comment them
• as a PDF ® tagger, where you want to add voice comments to certain points in a PDF, either as a professor collaboration with your students, as a scientist working together on a scientific paper, as an attorney working over contracts or patents with your customers or whatever else you need to do in your company with collaboration over PDF ® files
• as a customizable solution for companies, who need the features of voice commenting, such as e.g. construction companies over 2D or 3D plans, insurance companies on photos during claim adjustment, designers to discuss deigns with their customers and so on
• as a SDK for other programmers, who want to build something around or
• as a white label solution.

The ATAGIO™ solution is “patent pending” (application number 62212917) under US patent law.
ATAGIO™ is currently available for Android devices, iOS and PCs.

ATAGIO™ Voice Tagger – the mobile client – Server app

is a peer-to-peer app, which enables you to mark single or multiple spots or areas of your photo and add voice comments to these marked spots or areas. So you take a picture directly from the ATAGIO™ app or select one from the gallery, mark single or multiple spots with your fingers or stylus and record voice tags to these spots or areas. You can share this file with the embedded voice tags with other ATAGIO™ users, or upload it via share button to social media or photo communities. Others will be able to listen to your comments by selecting the relevant spot or area or listen to all of them.
Download Atagio™ for Android at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fb.tag and Atagio™ for iOS from iTunes.

ATAGIO™ PDF® Tagger

is a tool which is simple to use on smartphones, tablets and computers. With a few clicks you just create a project, create a group which can upload PDF®files, select a PDF®file, select certain areas of the text and mark them with mouse, stylus or fingers and speak your comments using your microphone. When done, save your work with the check mark or discard it with the X. Share with others via e-Mail or Cloud Services.

You can test ATAGIO™ PDF® Tagger now for free. Please register at https://pdf.atagio.com/?register

Team

Daniel Bitran

Co-Founder and head of sales USA.
Daniel Bitran is a highly motivated entrepreneur with extensive knowledge and experience in developing and growing sustainable and innovative start up businesses. Having graduated from Rutgers University in New Jersey, with a double BA in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies, he launched an innovative fashion brand that he still fully owns and operates. Additionally, he has launched several other businesses across multiple industries ranging from the Food Service industry to Technology. Daniel currently resides in New York City where he’s getting set to launch Atagio™ to the North American Market and beyond.

Marlon Alagoda

Senior programmer.
Marlon is software developer and studies Media Informatics and Visual Computing at the Technical University of Vienna. He loves developing client and serverside Javascript such as Node.js and Backbone.js. He has broad experience in other coding techniques.
Progamming languages: Javascript, Java, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, Matlab, Python, C++
Databases: MySQL, MongoDB, Redis
Frameworks and CMS: jQuery, Node.js, Express.js, Backbone.js, Marionette.js, d3.js, Play Framework, Android, OpenGL, Smarty, WordPress, Prestahop, Mongoose
Server technologies: Linux, Apache, NGINX, IIS More: SEO, UX design. He never turns down a project and enjoys a challenge.

Eva Bachmayer

Senior web developer
Eva has a dregree in Japanese Studies, was journalist for a Japanese newspaper for many years and is lecturer at the Japanese Studies Department of Vienna University.
She worked as web developer for www.grafsoft.at and as free lancer.